Nanocrystalline silicon thin film prepared by e-beam evaporation for display application

Abstract

In this paper e-beam evaporation technique is used for nc-Si film deposition rather than conventional plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD). In present work, the nc-Si films of different thicknesses (100, 150 and 200 nm) was deposited on Corning glass 1737 substrate using e-beam evaporation method with controlled beam current and deposition rate at moderately low temperature. The deposited nc-Si films were further characterized using FESEM, EDS, XRD, Raman Spectroscopy and AFM. The results of XRD and RAMAN confirm the nanocrystalline nature of the deposited film and the FESEM and AFM results demonstrate that the grain size increases with the increase in film thickness. To validate the feasibility of deposited film for TFT application, conductivity measurement is carried using 4-probe technique. The results indicate that e-beam evaporation is the cost effective alternative of PECVD and controlled grain size and density of nc-Si film can be easily achieved.